Anniversary
by r4ven3
Summary: Set early in S9, a look at most members of the Grid. Ruth has not turned up at work, so where can she be? Part angst, part romance, with itsy bits of humour. One shot only.


Beth crosses the Grid floor to join Tariq and Dimitri, who are hovering beside the desk of Alec White. Beth has not yet decided what she really thinks about Alec. He reminds her of her father – bleary-eyed, damaged, occasionally funny and charming, but mostly jaded and sarcastic – and yet she also likes him, unlike her father, whom she hopes to never set eyes on again.

"Any luck?" Tariq asks.

"Let me guess," Dimitri says, "he shouted at you."

Beth flops into the chair opposite where Alec sits while flicking open and closed a ball point pen, making a repetitive sound which sets her teeth on edge. Her eyes dart from one man to the other. "Neither," she says. "He said almost nothing, although his eyes told me a lot."

"Harry's eyes can talk?"

"Well, yes, Dimitri. Most people's eyes say what their mouths cannot."

Beth notices Alec's small eye roll. He knows exactly what she means. He is one whose eyes convey volumes – disappointment, long nights spent in bars, failure, self-hatred, hope, and occasionally a little joy. It is his complexity which fascinates her.

Harry had not behaved as expected. He had called her into his office with a curt phone call, and by the time she'd knocked on the door and entered his inner sanctum, he had closed his office blinds, and was again sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of his chin. He had indicated she should sit in the chair opposite his own. Then he'd sat back and watched her, his eyes unblinking. Beth does not find Harry at all attractive, but she has to admit that his eyes are his best feature, and capable of drawing to him the attention of everyone in the room. It is a skill he has clearly honed over time.

"You wanted to speak with me," she'd said after a long silence.

"Mmm. I've been wondering whether you know of Ruth's whereabouts."

Of course! Why had she even considered he might want to speak to her about some operational plan, detail, or blunder of her own? It was after nine-thirty, and Ruth had not yet arrived at work, so already it was a bad day for Harry.

"I've no idea. She was gone by the time I got up, and as you can see, she hasn't arrived at work. Have you tried ringing her?"

Harry stared at her for another long minute. She could not read his thoughts, but if the steeliness in his eyes was to be believed, he was not pleased with her response. "I have," he said at last, "and the calls have all rung out and gone to voice mail, and before you ask, I have left messages for her to ring me, which she hasn't done."

"Are you worried about her?"

"Do you have reason to think I should be?"

 _Jesus_. Had she known that this was to be an interrogation she would have brought her own thumbscrews. "Since I haven't spoken to her since around ten o'clock last night, I can't help you."

"So .. there's been nothing … unusual happening in her life?"

Which Beth knew meant: `Does Ruth have a boyfriend?' "Nothing at all. Sorry. Maybe she's meeting an asset."

And with that, Harry had dismissed her with a nod of his head, and a flick of his eyes towards the door. She couldn't understand why the two of them didn't just go out and get drunk together, and then shag one another until they'd sorted through whatever it was which rendered them unable to speak directly, one to the other.

"Oh-oh," says Dimitri, who has been watching Harry through the large window, "our subject is on the move."

Dimitri's words have the remaining three turning to watch as Harry shuffles on his coat, and then grabs his phone from on top of his desk, before he quickly leaves. Not once does he glance their way.

"He's not taking his car," Tariq says quietly.

"How can you tell?" Dimitri replies.

"Some spy you are, Levendis," Beth butts in. "He hasn't taken his keys."

"But they could be in one of his pockets," Dimitri says, defensively.

"Or he could be about to call his driver," Alec adds, looking from Dimitri to Beth and then to Tariq. "Were I to have a driver -"

"Fat chance of that ever happening," says Dimitri.

"As I was saying, were I to be given a car with a driver, I would use it all the time, even to visit the shops for more milk."

"Or the off license," Tariq adds quickly.

"Harry's not like that," says Beth, "and we shouldn't be standing here speculating, when none of us has a clue where he's going. He might be heading downstairs to the canteen."

"In an overcoat?" asks Tariq.

"Not unless he fancies contracting salmonella," adds Dimitri.

"The canteen isn't that bad," Beth says.

"It is!" say the three men in unison.

* * *

Harry is not driving, nor has he called his driver. He has an idea where Ruth might be, and so he quickly walks across the bridge towards the Thames embankment. The sky is overcast, and it looks like it might rain. The air is fresh, and a slight breeze has whipped up, creating a ripple on the surface of the river.

Harry is unsure how he will greet Ruth when he sees her .. _if_ he sees her, but he is almost certain she will be somewhere near the river. He knows that she occasionally needs time alone, as does he, and she has not been the same since the funeral of Ros Myers, when he had blurted out his clumsy proposal, and she had chastised him for his poor timing. With the wisdom provided by hindsight, Harry knows he should not have gone for the big one; he needed to have worked his way towards the idea of marriage, perhaps beginning with an invitation to dinner, or the theatre. He had played all his cards at once, and he had lost, but he is not about to give up, not yet. He has long ago acknowledged that he needs Ruth – not only at work, but in his personal life also – and he is equally sure that she needs him. It's just that she hasn't yet reached that same place of certainty. She will have to be convinced, wooed, and courted, and he is just the man to be doing that.

Harry stops before he reaches the embankment. He moves to the balustrade and leans against it, his eyes scanning the Thames embankment to his right. From his vantage point he has a view of most of the wooden benches along the Thames, but he can't see Ruth among the people sitting on the benches, or standing at the concrete wall by the water's edge. Harry sighs heavily. He doesn't enjoy this loss of control over his emotions. From an early age he'd been conditioned to suppress his feelings, to deny his emotions, and to soldier on. "Don't you dare cry," his father had said, an edge of threat in his voice. "Men don't cry, son." Harry the boy had longed to be a real man, so he had buttoned up his feelings, and become a man. To push his emotions deep into his body had worked for Harry the soldier, and for Harry the spy, but it had become harder and harder for Harry the man to continue keeping a lid on his feelings.

And then he'd met Ruth, and it wasn't long before he discovered that his father had been wrong, and that to feel something for another – to acknowledge what was in his heart – was what had been missing from his life. Following his father's advice had led to him not engaging fully in his marriage, failing to commit himself to his wife and children. Surely if he loved Ruth enough she would return his love for her in kind .. wouldn't she?

He is already on the embankment, his speed little more than a stroll, his eyes scanning the faces of the people in front of him, when through the busyness of the bodies milling along the pathway, he sees a small figure in a dark coat sitting on one of the benches, her eyes gazing out over the river. In her hands she holds a small posy of flowers. Harry almost cries with relief. Privately he has been imagining all manner of terrible events which may take her away from him, kidnapping being high on his list of probabilities. To his relief, Ruth appears safe, and she is sitting while gazing out over the Thames.

Harry slowly approaches her, and then when he is only four or so metres away from her, but outside her line of sight, he stops. He chooses stillness as he watches her closely in an attempt to gauge her mood, and perhaps ultimately her reasons for choosing to sit here, her hands grasping the flowers. For a few minutes he stands still, waiting for her to take her eyes from the river, waiting for her to turn his way.

What is he thinking? In all likelihood he is the very last person Ruth would want to see. He quickly turns, intending to retrace his steps, but then he has a change of heart, leaving the path and crossing the road to a roadside coffee vendor. He buys two take-away coffees - a latte for Ruth, and a black coffee for himself - and then he quickly returns to the bench where she had been sitting, to find the bench empty. He sighs, his body heavy with disappointment, looking left and then right. Then he sees her. She had been hidden behind the form of a large man who is photographing the opposite side of the river bank. Standing at the balustrade beside the river, Ruth is watching him, her eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

He slowly moves closer to her. "I brought you coffee," he says, holding out the cardboard cup, but she doesn't take it.

"We'd better sit down," she says, indicating the bench where, only ten minutes earlier, she'd been sitting.

Harry waits while Ruth sits, and then he positions himself beside her, leaving a gap on the bench wide enough on which to place his own cup of coffee. Ruth takes the coffee he proffers, and nods her thanks. He notices that in her other hand she still holds the flowers, and that they are tied with a length of blue ribbon. He thinks the flowers are daisies and chrysanthemums, but he doesn't know much about flowers, so they could be anything. Most of the flowers are white, while a few are pale pink.

Ruth notices his scrutiny of her flowers, so she places them the other side of her, on the bench. "Did someone give them to you?" Harry asks, not really wanting to know the answer.

Ruth shakes her head, "Thanks for this," she says, lifting the coffee to her lips and taking a careful sip, "you may have saved my life. It's chilly out here."

He wants to ask her why she'd not come into work, but he knows Ruth well enough to accept that there would be a good reason. "You've been here all morning?"

"Not all morning, no. I had to buy these," Ruth replies, and looks down at the flowers, "and I've been wondering where to throw them. I thought of going to that building where they took me .. that day .. but I just couldn't do it, so I came here, and I've been here since .. I don't know .. a long time."

"You should have rung to tell me," Harry says, and as soon as the words are spoken, he regrets them. "I've been worried. I've been ringing you."

Ruth then takes her phone from the pocket of her coat and shakes her head. "I must have turned it off," she muses, and then turns it on. The tone sounds as the phone registers each message sent. "Sorry," she says quietly. "I've been … preoccupied."

Harry wants to be angry with her. He wants to mention the pile of translating which has been growing on her desk, and Tariq's suggestion that he and she work together to identify several Iranian nationals who have illegally entered the country. He wants to convey to her how worried he's been, and what he had feared may have happened to her, but he says nothing. Instead, he watches her as she sips her coffee and gazes out over the river. "You should be wearing gloves," he says quietly, wishing they were close, like they had once been, so that she wouldn't flinch or pull away were he to grasp her hands and rub them between his own.

"I was, but then I … I put them in my pocket. I wanted to feel the cold air on my skin."

Harry doesn't ask her why. He doesn't want to ask any more questions of her, because he may not want to hear her answers. He knows he has interrupted something important to her, and that she is only waiting until he leaves. "I should go back to work," he says, turning on the seat, as if preparing to leave, when Ruth's words cut through the air between them, stopping him in mid movement.

"Today is the anniversary," she says quietly.

He can feel her eyes on him, so he turns to look at her. "Anniversary?"

"Of that day. You know."

Harry quickly does the calculation, and then the penny drops. "Oh, you mean .. _that_ day."

"It's one year today since I returned from Cyprus, and George was killed, and ..."

How could he have forgotten, but he had. He is watching her face, her large eyes looking up into his own. "I'm so sorry, Ruth," is all he says. "I just wish ..." He wishes none of it had happened. He wishes George hadn't died, but most of all he wishes she'd never left London in the first place.

"I know you do," she says kindly.

Harry is sure he sees the ghost of a smile on her lips. "I know how awful that day was for you," he says carefully. "It was for us all."

Ruth nods slightly, and then, holding her coffee cup between her palms she sips slowly, all the while looking across the river, as if all the answers to everything are inscribed on the walls of the buildings on the opposite bank. "I need to draw a line under the past," she says so quietly that he has to lean closer to hear her. "I thought the gesture of the flowers as an offering of … peace and love and .. forgiveness may ..."

"Bring an end to your ..."

Harry cannot speak the word, and so he is relieved when Ruth does. "Guilt," she says, and she has turned to look into his eyes. Her eyes are sad, but they are dry.

"Guilt will eat you up," Harry adds. Ruth nods, and then again takes her eyes from his. "I have an idea for the flowers, Ruth." When Ruth turns back to him, he shares his idea, and when he has finished, she nods, smiling.

* * *

Ruth is happy for him to accompany her to the middle of the bridge, and they stand together at the balustrade, watching the tug boats and launches, along with a tourist boat, waiting for the right moment.

"Now?" Harry suggests, once the water below is free from traffic.

Ruth leans over and tosses the small posy into the Thames. They stand together, not touching, while it spins in the breeze until it reaches the water, dips under for a moment, and then is carried under the bridge by the current. Harry has been holding his breath, waiting for Ruth to say something, but she has been quiet throughout. It is a solemn moment, the air between them heavy with words which will likely remain unspoken. Harry continues to stand in silence, a stern, solid figure, his body tense with fear for what this ceremony may mean - for him, for them - while beside him, he is sure he can feel her relaxing.

"I'm glad you suggested the bridge, Harry," she says at last. "I can leave it all behind me now. The river took me away from you, and now it can take away all that is left of … what I've been dragging with me since I came home."

He is relieved to hear her use the word, `home', and so he turns to face her, to see her eyes shining into his own. Did she mean what she just said? "In my mind you never left," he says. "I was never able to let you go."

"I know."

There is a very long moment during which they gaze deeply into the eyes of the other, each oblivious to the continuing movement of others along the bridge. Harry fights a powerful urge to kiss her, so he is surprised when Ruth moves closer to him and lifts her hand to cup his jaw. She rubs the pad of her thumb across his cheek, sending much-needed warmth into every cell of his body. When she leans even closer to him, and kisses him, the touch of her lips on his is so brief that afterwards he is not sure that it had really happened. "Am I forgiven?" she asks at last, dropping her hand from his face.

"For what?"

"For finding love with someone else. For living with him. For blaming you for his death."

"There's nothing to forgive, Ruth. I hadn't expected you to live like a nun." He turns to face her, and steps so close that there is barely space between them. Without thinking too much about it, he places his hands on her waist and leans down to kiss her. He is prepared for her to pull away from him, but she doesn't. The kiss is brief, but long enough for him to feel her lips beginning to part beneath his. He doesn't take advantage of it, but quickly ends the kiss, and pulls away, dropping his hands from her waist. The brief moment of disappointment he sees in her eyes is worth the immense surge of self control he'd needed to end the kiss when he had. He watches her for a moment longer, as he sees her bury her sense of loss – for her family in Cyprus, for the life she would never have with George, for the kiss she had wanted to lose herself within – and then she turns away from him a little. "We need to get back to the Grid," he says quietly.

Ruth looks up into his eyes, and he sees a softness there, something he hasn't seen in her since her shocking return to London. "Thank you for coming to find me," she says. "I couldn't have … done that .. without you here. You .. also lost something that day."

Harry knows what she means. He lost the hope that on her return, they could pick up where they'd left off almost three years earlier. "But not permanently, I hope."

"No, not permanently. I think I'm ready to ..." and her sentence, like so many others, is never completed, but he knows what she means.

"Then I'm glad I came looking for you."

"I knew you'd come," she says, and then reaches for his hand. "Hold my hand, Harry," she says as she laces her fingers through his. "I now know how much I need you."

Harry grasps her fingers between his own, holding in the joy which he is sure is about to burst from his chest. Then they turn and continue across the bridge together, holding hands all the way.

* * *

Dimitri enters the tea room, where Alec, Tariq and Beth are making coffee for themselves. "Harry's been gone a while," he says. "Do you think one of us should ring him?"

" _No_ ," the others say together.

"Harry can sort this out on his own," Beth says, "He and Ruth have known one another a long time."

"So that means he'll be able to find her?" asks Dimitri.

"Probably," Beth replies. "He seems to know her habits."

"My uncle had a dog once," says Alec, stirring his coffee, "and because his yard wasn't big enough he had to give it away to a family who owned a property. Five months later the dog found its way home – all the way from Shropshire."

Alec hadn't noticed the other three watching him, their mouths open. "What has that story to do with Harry?" Beth asks snappily.

"I'm just saying .." Alec replies, "that if a dog can find its way home after five months, then surely Harry and Ruth can after a few short hours."

"But the Grid isn't home," Dimitri points out.

"It is to them," Beth says quietly.

Dimitri is left in the kitchen alone while Beth, Tariq and Alec leave, each with a fresh cup of coffee. They are about to turn towards their respective work stations when they are distracted by movement just inside the doorway to the Grid. They each stand still and watch as Harry turns towards his office door, and Ruth continues in the direction of her desk. None of them miss the look the couple exchange just before Harry slides opens the door to his office – part gaze, and part smile.

"Told you," Beth whispers to the other two.

"Where do you think they've been?" Tariq asks, his voice a hoarse whisper.

"No idea," replies Beth, "and it's none of our business, but they're back, and that's all that matters."

"Haven't you three work to be doing?" barks Harry from outside his office.

"Yes, Harry," they say as one, and hurry to their desks, each wearing a satisfied smile.


End file.
